


Never comment on your weaknesses out loud, lest your enemies overhear

by lord_acies



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Author loves to chat in the Comments, Author should stop referring to themselves in the third person in the tags..., Bruce Banner is a BAMF, Doctor Doom as the stock villian, Gen, I sure hope my facts are right here., Jarvis (Iron Man movies) is a Good Bro, Some characters might be OOC in the name of humor, Spiderman cameo, The opening chapter is pure crack, Thor Is Not Stupid, Tony Stark curses in Italian, Why is the fantastic four always off world when ya need em?, Writer is NOT multi-lingual, this is my least serious fic to date
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-22 02:45:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9578987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lord_acies/pseuds/lord_acies
Summary: When the Avengers collectively realize that the only person who learned English as a first/primary language is the one who butchers it half the time, a certain fly on the wall forces them to work around a magically drawn language barrier. Bruce, being the only one who can speak English, is not only forced to mind his temper, but also to become the spokesperson of the team until they can reverse its effects.





	

Tony's a inventing hurricane in his lab. Currently, he's surrounded by ACDC's "Hell's Bells" and a half dozen of teal holograms displaying various schematics, while working on a new repulsor that's more like a flame thrower than a generic arc-reactor powered blaster that he is usually packing.

Suddenly he lets out a triumphant "Whoop!" while slapping down his tools, dashing to the elevator and slamming the button to the Avengers suite on his way through the doors.

Meanwhile Hawkeye, Captain America and Thor are taking turns in a Deer-shooter game in the living room while Bruce is teaching Natasha how to make some obscure foreign dish in the near-by kitchen. Tony bursts throughout the elevator doors, breaking the silence, and shouts "Jarvis! Sharpshooting!"

A target flips down from the ceiling as Clint pulls a bow and arrow from God knows where and looses a bolt backwards over his shoulder. Tony takes aim with the new glove at the target and unfortunately instead of it actually firing it set his hand on fire. 

"Fanculo!" He curses loudly through the suite, surprising all the multilingusts in the room.

Bruce leans over to Natasha and whispers "what?" She cups her hands around his ears and whispers back, "He said, 'F*ck'." Clint pesters her "Nat, all the rest of us know what he said. Why'd ya whisper?" She jokes, "Well excuse me for not wanting to teach Thor another curse word."

Tony is still on fire and screaming obscenities in Italian while running around in circles while Cap. chases him with the fire extinguisher. Miraculously, he manages to put out the genius by the time they all shuffle over. Cap sighs and mutters "This is the third time this week..." while dragging him towards the medbay. All the while, Tony's whining like a kicked puppy. Complaining that he can "Take care myself Captain Buzzkill" and continuing to curse in Italian if only to illicit a reaction from Steve's 'delicate sensibilities'.

The entire team follows close behind, except for Nat who went ahead to prep the (curiously overstocked) burn kit. Thankfully with the last remodels of the Avengers floors of Stark Tower, Tony thought ahead and had a medical wing built in. It was adorably pathetic to see the entire team cram themselves into one of the tiny SHIELD Medical rooms to hover over whoever was injured at the time. Now they can stay in the Tower for everything short of life and death crisis's. Although Tony did end up having to put in a massive couch, because they all downright refused to leave the bedside of anyone who got hit hard enough to need it.

While she slathers Tony's hand with Aloe, Natasha casually interrogates, "Where did you learn Italian?" "It is a romance language." He jokes easily with his media smile.

'Tasha grabs his burnt hand roughly -on purpose- as she starts to wrap it in gauze for the third time this week. He winces and spits out an answer, "My Dad was at work or drunk, my mom was a socialite and my first nanny was Italian so that's what I learned alright?!!!" He glares back her.

The rest of the team sitting on the other side of the room felt bad for Natasha who looked slightly ashamed for pressing him so Cap says, "English isn't my first language either." Everyone looks shocked. How could the the living essence of America not learn English first? Cap. continues, "My mom came over from Ireland in 1916. I learned her language, Gaelic, first."

Tony looked vaguely relieved that he wasn't the only one (and the attention wasn't on him). Then again, Nat is Russian and Thor speaks Norse.  
Clint straightens up in his seat and confesses, "I didn't even know a spoken language to start with. My brother was deaf so I only spoke sign language for a while."

Everyone turns to Bruce and he grins joking self-deprecatingly, "Looks like I'm the only one to learn English as a first language and I'm still the one to butcher it on a daily basis!"

"Interesting" thought an invisible, uninvited guest sitting in the corner of the room.

 

\--------------------SUDDEN SWAP TO BRUCE'S POV BECAUSE THIS WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN AS TWO SEPARATE CHAPTERS AND I JUST DIDN'T NOTICE---------------------

 

Suddenly Loki leaps out of the corner of the room. "Enjoy a taste of my powers, Avengers." He states diabolically.

Before any of us could stop him he raised his scepter into the air and started muttering something ominous in an old Norse tongue. Everyone around me was screaming their lungs out as we all spun around the room in a magical vortex.

"Okay. I'm okay. We're okay. Calm down, Banner." I thought, knowing if I turned into the Hulk now I'd crush everyone.

Finally everything stopped and the others dropped to the floor unconscious. I went to punch Loki and keep him from escaping, but he caught my punch and hit me hard over the head with his scepter. The last thing I saw before completely blacking out was Loki sneering and then disappearing in a flash of magical energy.

I groan, waking up with pain shooting through my skull. My eyes flicker open to find the team huddled over me on the floor. When they realize I'm up they all scoot back except Tony who offers a hand to help me up. Suddenly the screen on the far end of the room lit up. It was Doctor Doom. Tony shoves me forward and gives me a thumbs up paired with a wink. I give him my best "What the fuck" face (generally reserved for drunk science level bad ideas), but he just shoos me towards the monitor.

Whatever Loki did... It can't be good.

Doom snarls his obviously prepared speech into the camera "Avengers!!! It is high time that you cower bef-"

"Listen Doom," I take a card out of Tony's deck by interrupting him, "You are the Fantastic Four's nemesis. That means you bother them with your stupid plans that won't work."

"Hey!" Doom has an indignant expression on his metallic face. He opens his mouth as if to say more, but I interrupt him again.

"Where the heck are the Fantastic Four anyway?" I ask as if he wasn't threatening us and likely the entire city.

"Off world, of course!! What better time to take over the world!?!?!" He acts like attacking NYC when it's down a few heroes is a genius plan, despite the Avengers, a literal high-school of mutants, the Sorcerer Supreme and an entire baseball teams worth of assorted other heroes in the state.

I weigh my options, the Avengers are compromised, the Fantastic Four are off world and the X-Men are more concerned with the registration acts right now. I've played enough poker with Nat, Clint and Tony to run a decent bluff, but there's a lot at stake if I fail.

"So you'd rather fight the seven of us than the four of them?" I snort with the same patronizing tone a teacher of mine once used.

Doom looks smug, "I have an army."

I chuckle darkly to keep up the facade, even though I'm freaking out. "Oh. Is that all?"

I shuffle so Tony's in the frame as I direct Doom's attention to him. "Stark here built weapons of mass destruction for a living; The Merchant of Death, perhaps you've heard of him?"

Pointing at Thor I add, "He is quite literally a God who wields a hammer that hits with twice the force of a neutron star."

Sliding to bring Rodgers into view I point him out to the would be villain of the day, "Here we have Captain America, the super soldier who won't stop 'til the end of the line."

Nat and Clint see the cue and step forward together as a united front. "And two ex-con, ex-SHIELD, assassins who are the scariest of us all."

"That's saying a lot especially since, as for me... Well, I'm the monster that beat a God senseless last month and has a track record for shrugging off the full force of the military." I turn all of my attention to Doom as I finish up the introduction.

Doom mutters, "You're bluffing."

"Maybe I am? Maybe I'm not. Either way, I don't think you want to make me angry." My eyes flash a dangerous green theatrically. These are my friends, this is my home, and I'm not going to run from that or let them get hurt when I can stop it. 

And on that harsh note I turn off the computer and more accurately fall than sit down on the chair.

Tony grins, resting is hand on my shoulder and by the gleam in his eyes I can tell he is about to make one of his awful jokes. "Merda Banner, non pensava che si poteva essere più paura il ragazzo grande." (Shit Banner, didn't think you could be scarier than the big guy.)

"Uhh... Tony? I don't know much Italian and I'm pretty sure you didn't ask for a large coffee so... if we could stick to English?" I awkwardly ask.

Natasha looks confused and questions, "Podozhdite. YA snafu ital'yanskiy. Pochemu eto ne imeyet smysla?" (Wait. I know Italian. Why doesn't it make sense?) She seems to notice that she's speaking in Russian, because she ghosts her fingertips around her throat and mutters, "Odin iz tekh dney, da?" (One of those days, huh?)


End file.
